


It's a long way down

by pene



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-22
Updated: 2006-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pene/pseuds/pene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one says goodbye any more</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a long way down

**Author's Note:**

> Sab and Abby said some things aloud. august, another juxtaposition, and luna worked their magic and made it better than it would have been

I. Thought they'd seen the last of long ago

The buzzer buzzes and she remembers where she is.

*

Her apartment way up on the twenty fifth floor. All living/dining   
pressed up against acid-washed skies. She looks out across a city day   
and night and fifteen million smiling actors' faces.

Her life. "We'll get it in the Times. None of the others matter,"   
into one phone as another rings though it's still Sunday by her   
estimation. "Believe me."

No one says good-bye anymore, not here, maybe not since BJ gave up   
and wrote it in giant stones on the ground for Hawkeye to watch and   
leave behind. That was decades ago.

"What was it like, Korea?"

"I wasn't there 'til seventy-six."

"And?"

"I played a lot of poker."

She's started watching M*A*S*H again, in between phone calls. When   
she watches she thinks of him amongst the shrapnel and he's skinnier   
and funnier and (always) braver. Her life is one giant leap   
backwards.

*

But she can't remember if they were ever friends. He'd never had much   
hair. He'd never said anything she wanted to hear.

He stood in a meeting room to tell her that his sometime-wife was   
pregnant. She thought, a joke, funny ha-ha, funny like fish. Because   
she couldn't imagine him with a kick'n'play anything. Or one of those   
ponies on blue plastic wheels. Or with his wife, to be honest. It   
wasn't until he said, apologetically, "she's hell to share a bathroom   
with," that she believed him.

When everything was over and done she finessed her way into the H-car   
contract and apartments in LA, Tokyo, The Hague because she could use   
words like accountable and protection as though she meant them. The   
world called the H-cars "Hydros", on her advice. "No one's afraid of   
a little water".

She sleeps in a waterbed.

*

There's a man (not a stranger) on a treadmill and sometimes in her   
apartment. He's imaginative but tonight all sweat and longing and   
pant,pant,pant underneath his Rolex so she fakes it for him.

He believes what he wishes to believe.

Then, "I'll see you tomorrow?" he asks. Though he lives only three   
floors below. She wonders if she should let him down easy. She has a   
vibrator.

*

The buzzer bu-

Hard to recall the lightning moment of waking. Can't find feet, head,   
the door. She blinks. It's dark. She's not hungover.

Last time she truly drank she dialed his number from memory. He'd   
moved. She doesn't drink for fear she might find him in the alcohol   
fog but her sleep's the sleep of the innocent since the world doesn't   
lay so heavy on-

The buzzer buzzes(again?). And she remembers where she is.

*

He looks exactly the same. He looks like he wants to say "I was in   
the neighborhood." He looks like he wants to apologize. He doesn't.

"Andi kicked me out."

"So you got on a plane?"

"Yeah."

"To California?"

He shrugs, frowns.

"Okay."

Okay.

"You want coffee? Or something stronger?"

No tan, no Rolex. They stand above the waking city and, of course, he   
kisses her. She steadies herself against the kitchen counter. She   
thinks, t h i s.

This is not my responsibility.

***

II. Call it an imaginary friend

She tries not to think about his family.

Doesn't call him at home. (He went back. Or never really left.)   
Still, she imagines his wife's voice, imagines, "You've reached the   
deliriously happy couple and our exceptionally gifted sons." The boys   
are almost ten, called Jonathan and Daniel. Jonathan likes some sort   
of toy called a Nanomite. Daniel broke his arm in a rocket-launcher-  
on-the-roof accident. They're smart. And he thinks the world of them.   
She doesn't know whose last name they use.

He calls from the plane and she finds that voice with the laugh in   
it. "You're calling now? Sometimes I have, you know, actual things to   
do. With actual people. I'm a busy woman, buster." She feels cheap   
(and possibly like someone from the 1940s) until he says,   
quietly, "I'm sorry." And she imagines the suited man in seat 24B   
glancing across as he says it.

Though really, she feels sort of cheap any time he's not in the room.

"When will you be here?"

*

Late. It's her apartment and dark on the twenty-fifth floor so no one   
can see in. Still, she catches him looking over her shoulder at the   
blank black windows and it's a reminder. He flinches when her phone   
rings. She turns it off, pretends the rest of the world doesn't   
exist. Paul Simon is singing about French people with French names   
and a dog.

He pulls out a box. Oddly formal. "Please accept this, uh, token as a-  
um-"

"Token?" she offers. She is wary.

"Quite. As a token of my regard." He frowns. Hands it over, wishing   
he'd scripted himself.

She opens the box and shining there's a heavy silver bracelet.

"It's a tha" He's going to say thank you. It's heavy and lovely and   
it's an apology. It might be an insult.

"It came out wrong. I didn't mean it this way," he says because he   
knows. It's the least he can do and he did it all wrong. Which says   
something.

"What did you mean?"

He looks at the floorboards. Sighs. "You're beautiful." He's   
frustrated because he sounds insincere and he isn't, because he maybe   
loves her and still, this is all there is. He bought her a pretty   
gift and so.

She puts it on. She wears it always. Grows accustomed to its shine   
and weight. Reassured. But his mouth tightens a little to see it.

*

He's right. She is beautiful. There are mirrors and then her bones   
and everyman's eyes. Each time she opens her door to him she knows   
he's not enough to justify this. She's beautiful. Funny and brave and   
respected and so fucking tall it's a joke. And she's second or fourth   
or nineteenth in line for his time.

But when he argues with the television he's almost always right. And   
in the dark he's inarticulate, amazed. Then she wakes to find him   
scrawling on ruled paper while the kettle shrills at him from the   
kitchen.

She doesn't ask what he's writing but mutters, "Can you turn that   
thing off?" He smiles to hear her. Then notices the kettle.

"You got tea?" he asks.

She opens one eye and looks at him dubiously.

"I'm supposed to cut down on caffeine, or something," he says. She   
has the sense not to ask who initiated this.

"Look above the stove," she says.

He comes back with strong black coffee in two mugs. She sits up in   
bed, watches the unchanging sky through the steam from her mug and   
listens to him muttering irritably. When he chuckles aloud she smiles   
widely.

She loves him. And forgets all the ways he's not enough until the   
next time she opens the door to him and he's short-tempered and   
nearly bald and married. He pulls his tie off and tosses it over his   
bag. She's never seen that shirt before. And something sinks inside.

***

III. Too far to walk home

But.

Three blank weeks of "Sorry I missed you," and no reply. When he   
turns up on her doorstep without having called she says, in a pre-  
emptive strike, "so, you're breaking up with me." He pauses, looks   
past her into the apartment.

When he says, "no." she knows he's lying. She closes the door behind   
him.

Whiskeys poured and ice. She's lost some weight and everything seems   
thin. She swallows, counts to maybe six and says, "It's okay."

He looks at his hands, reaches for hers. "No." And quietly, "I love   
you." His bones hang heavy on hers.

So she gets to keep him.

*

She calls him cab after cab, ensures he doesn't miss the flight home.   
In her apartment just his toothbrush. A pale blue shirt. Once a space   
pen from the Smithsonian.

From the plane. "The boys got it for me."

"I hear it writes upside down."

"We should take a trip. Drive somewhere," he says.

She smiles. "You hate this coast."

"What's east of there?"

"The desert."

"I hate the desert," he says.

"Alaska?" she suggests. A ping as the "Fasten Seatbelts" sign flicks   
on. And maybe he just felt it something he should offer.

*

Because it's already over. And there's nothing to lose save a day or   
a week. A month. They should say goodbye, they say everything else.   
And they see each other after dark so there's only the space between   
two bodies to fill. They talk about public policy and war.

"Two Americans died in Korea in '76."

"I know, I was there."

"Did you know them?"

"Slightly."

But he speaks at length (with ferocity) about the conflict in Brazil,   
about soldiers and civilians. So she knows it's not the thought of   
death that stops his speech.

As for hers? Time and again, she opens her mouth hoping to be the one   
to say it's over. She has the words prepared. She just doesn't want   
him to leave.

*

And in the end she doesn't expect it.

So when he says. "CJ. It's- I can't keep on doing this," it feels   
swift and sour in her stomach.

He says, "I love you. So much. And I can't-". There are tears in his   
eyes, black and wet, unexpected. He's crying here, her apartment,   
because he can't grieve for this anywhere else.

She says, too, "I love you." The words ring false and she wants to   
take them back. Rinse and repeat. Though she does love him.

She hands him a tissue, watches him as he wipes his eyes, awkwardly.   
She walks across the room and leans against the window. The city is   
behind her and below her and alwaysalways around her. Millions and   
millions of people, just outside. He was the only one she chose.

"I was too late," she says eventually. And she doesn't feel like an   
actor.

"I'm sorry."

She says, "Please" and "go." She closes her eyes.

And the door swings shut between them. She turns to rest her forehead   
against the glass and looks down and down. The entrance to her   
building is far below and people are shuffles and streaks of color on   
the sidewalk. She never sees him leave.

*

end.


End file.
